Hiding vs. Deleting Content in the Site Manager

There is a difference between hiding and deleting. Both are useful tools but their use will depend on what you are trying to accomplish. 

Deleting

Deleting will completely remove an item from the database. Use this option only if you are certain you will not want that information again. In general, we would recommend hiding rather than deleting because the information could be useful later and you can always update something but once it's deleted it can not be undone.

Hiding

Hiding will prevent the item from showing on the site but will still be available for later use. So if you potentially want to use a product or category later on, or change something rather than get rid of it completely, you should hide it and not delete. 

If you have an ecommerce site and care about viewing order history, you generally NEVER want to delete old products but you would want to hide them instead. Even if you don’t carry these products any more you want them to be available for historical order data. 

If you don’t want a long list of products cluttering up one of your active categories, you can always create an archive category and move your hidden products to that category.